Climatological Megastructures and Cultural Architecture

Until now we have been designing buildings to match our climates, but it seems we are now on the verge of designing climates to match our buildings. Take a look at Qatar, which has proposed designing a man made cloud to help keep soccer players cooler while playing in the upcoming World Cup. The “cloud,” filled with helium and built of light carbon material, would use four solar-powered engines for maneuvering between the stadium and the sun to provide shade. Hmm, puts a lot more pressure on architects – or maybe less pressure? I want to grow up to be a climate architect. London is getting into the game for the Olympics as well…

Lemon Juice, Invisibility and Cognitive Distortion

Does rubbing your face with lemon juice make you invisible to video cameras?  It’s the Anosognosic Dilemma. How can we ever know something is wrong if we don’t know what that something is? If I don’t know. And I know that I don’t know it. That’s fine. Because I do know about it. But what about the unknown unknowns? Just came across a great discussion between filmaker Errol Morris and Philosopher David Dunning from the New York Times this past summer. The discussions details a bank robber from a news article:

Wheeler had walked into two Pittsburgh banks and attempted to rob them in broad daylight.  What made the case peculiar is that he made no visible attempt at disguise.  The surveillance tapes were key to his arrest.  There he is with a gun, standing in front of a teller demanding money.  Yet, when arrested, Wheeler was completely disbelieving.  “But I wore the juice,” he said.  Apparently, he was under the deeply misguided impression that rubbing one’s face with lemon juice rendered it invisible to video cameras.

Dunning believes if Wheeler was too stupid to be a bank robber, perhaps he was also too stupid to know that he was too stupid to be a bank robber — that is, his stupidity protected him from an awareness of his own stupidity. Dunning wonders whether it was possible to measure one’s self-assessed level of competence against something a little more objective — say, actual competence.  Thus, when we try something we are not capable of or truly do not understand, then we suffer a dual burden: Not only do we reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but our incompetence robs us of the ability to realize it.  Instead, like that bank robber covered in lemon juice, we are left with the erroneous impression we are doing just fine…W now know it as  the Dunning-Kruger effect, a form of cognitive distortion and the tendency of incompetent people, to overestimate their own abilities…

Print is Dead…Finally?

Well it’s not often you see magazines shuttered…then relaunched. But that’s what you have with Gourmet, a perennial bastion of the culinary arts. Discontinued in October, Conde Nast just announced they are launching an iPad app called Gourmet Live. Back at Northwestern we called students in the print program “Dinosaurs” for a reason. And it’s about time the meteor hits. WIRED has done an exceptional job with their iPad app and others will be quick to follow. How many other industries can you think of where you can shutter an epic brand, then relaunch it 8 months later?

Don't spill on it...

I Want to Climb Inside my Data…Do you?

Ever since I saw Professor  JoAnn Kuchera-Morin speak at the CAT Conference in NY last year, I have been obsessed with her AlloSphere — and have even emailed her about potentially visiting when I am next in the area. The AlloSphere is a three-story-tall aluminum sphere with a catwalk running through the center with six hi-def 3-D video projectors that spray 360-degree images onto a spherical screen.  It resembles the famous catwalk fight seen in the Death Star, but it’s actually located at UC Santa Barbara and what it essentially does is, it allows researchers to literally get inside their data and information. Projects so far include examinations of how hydrogen atoms bond together and a giant model of the brain derived from fMRI scans. Up to 30 people can fit on the catwalk, and they get glasses and wireless joysticks to mess around with the streaming imagery. Dozens of speakers play sound into the echo-free chamber. The result is psychedelia with research applications….How could you not want to experience this? Every time I look at data, I envision what it would look like in the AlloSphere…

Get in there...

An Acoustic Ecologist and Listening to a Global Sunrise

Noise pollution is such a big problem and no one pays attention to it (as well as light pollution), but Gordon Hempton is trying to make a difference. There are only a dozen places in the US where it can be absolutely quiet for 15 mins at a time – free of any unnatural noise. That’s amazing and sad. Hempton has taken a sonic EKG of America and recorded a Global Sunrise. I’m not sure how his CD is $118, but that makes it even more fascinating. And his work is available on iTunes.

It sounds kind of like Pink Floyd...

Texting Sharks warn Life Guards? OMG…WTF?

I’m not sure if sharks are participating willingly, but apparently some beaches in Australia have outfitted sharks with SMS enabled devices that text life guards to warn them when they get too close to land. If something doesn’t seem right here, it’s not. This is technology inserting itself into the circle of life. But I must admit, it’s kind of cool. If only we could text the sharks back. Shouldn’t this be a two-way communication?

y didnt u txt me?

Tufte Meets Biggie…

Everything I need to know I learned from Biggie — or so it seems with these graphical representations of rap songs. All too often we struggle with how best to match data and culture. This isn’t exactly Tufte, but I’m always up for a good graph…

So true...

Pretty clear-cut...